Joan Rivers - Biography

By Patrick Bromley

Comedians Expert

Born: June 8, 1933

Died: September 4, 2014

Joan Rivers Overview

A pioneer for women in comedy, Joan Rivers' larger-than-life personality has become the stuff of legend. With her signature catchphrase "Can we talk?", Rivers has proven to be a gifted comedy writer, insult comedian, interviewer, fashion critic and much, much more. She's a consummate workhorse, staying busy -- and, even better, relevant -- into her 80s, continuing to appear on TV every week, perform gigs and publish books.

Quick Joan Rivers Facts

• Joan Rivers was born Joan Alexandra Molinsky in Brooklyn, New York, in 1933.
• She changed her name to Rivers while pursuing an acting career in the late 1950s and began performing around New York comedy clubs in the early 1960s.
• She made her first appearance on  The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson in February 1965, which launched her to overnight success.
• The same year, she released her first comedy album, Mr. Phyllis and Other Funny Stories.
• She became the host of her own daytime talk show in 1969.
• In the early '80s, Rivers was named permanent guest host of The Tonight Show.
• She launched her own short-lived late night talk show, The Late Show with Joan Rivers, in 1986.
• In the mid-'90s, Rivers became known for covering red carpet events and mocking/critiquing celebrities and fashion on the E! network.
• In 2009, she was roasted by Comedy Central. Guests on the dais included Jeff Ross, Greg Giraldo, Whitney Cummings and roastmaster Kathy Griffin, who has clearly been inspired by Rivers.
• She was hospitalized in August 2014 after going into cardiac arrest and was placed in a medically-induced coma.
• She passed away on September 4th at the age of 81.

Joan Rivers on Television

By the early 1970s, Rivers had become a regular guest on both The Tonight Show and Hollywood Squares. She hosted her own syndicated daytime talk show, That Show with Joan Rivers, for a year in 1969. She continued to make a name for herself on talk shows and TV during the '70s and by the early '80s had become a regular guest host of The Tonight Show, filling in for Johnny Carson when he was off.

That all changed in 1986, though, when she was offered her own late-night talk show at the new FOX network. The Late Show with Joan Rivers launched in '86, and because she was now competing with Carson, the talk show host never spoke to her again and banned her from appearing on The Tonight Show, a decision that was honored by Carson's successors Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien. However, when Jimmy Fallon took over the show in 2014, he had Rivers appear on the very first episode.

The Late Show with Joan Rivers lasted only a year, at which point Rivers and her husband/producer Edgar Rosenberg were fired. Rosenberg killed himself shortly after the firing. Rivers eventually returned to television in 1989 with the daytime talk show The Joan Rivers Show, which ran for five years and won Rivers a Daytime Emmy award.

In the mid-'90s, Rivers and her daughter Melissa became the go-to correspondents for red carpet events on the E! network. She left the network in 2003 after signing a contract to do red carpet coverage for the TV Guide Network, but returned to E! in 2010 as the host of Fashion Police.

She and Melissa have starred on the WE tv reality show Joan & Melissa: Joan Knows Best in 2011. It has run for four seasons.

Joan Rivers Comedy Albums and Specials

• Mr. Phyllis and Other Funny Stories (1965) (album)
• The Next to Last Joan Rivers Album (1970) (album)
• What Becomes a Semi Legend Most? (1983) (album)
• Joan Rivers: Abroad in London (1992) (stand-up special)
• Live at the Apollo (2004) (stand-up special)
• Joan Rivers: Before Melissa Pulls the Plug (2006) (stand-up special)
• An Audience with Joan Rivers (2006) (stand-up special)
• Joan Rivers: Live at the London Palladium (2006) (stand-up special)
• Don't Start with Me (2013) (album)

Additional Joan Rivers Facts

• Rivers wrote the screenplay for the 1973 TV movie The Girl Most Likely To... Five years later, she wrote and directed the feature film Rabbit Test starring Billy Crystal.
• She is the author of 12 books, including non-fiction memoirs and narrative fiction like the 1984 best-seller The Life and Hard Times of Heidi Abramowitz. Her first book, Having a Baby can be a Scream, was published in 1974; her most recent, Diary of a Mad Diva, was published in 2014 when Rivers was 81 years old.
• Rivers was the winner of Celebrity Apprentice in 2009.
• A documentary about her, Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, was released in 2011.